Traditional votive-paper-making villages on the outskirts of Hanoi – Phuc Am and Duyen Truong in Thuong Tin District’s Duyen Thai Commune and Do Xa in Thuong Tin’s Van Diem Commune – rushed to finish thousands of paper models of horses for the Tet Lunar New Year Festival, Vietnam’s biggest holiday, which peaked on Friday (January 31).

This year's festival marks the beginning of the year of the horse in Vietnamese culture, hence the animal's popularity.

Burning votive paper or paper models of houses, clothes, vehicles and other material things is a tradition believed to have originated in China to show the living people’s hope that the objects will be sent to their relatives in the afterlife.